Chapter 11 #2
“Because you wanted me to,” I whisper, stepping forward before I can stop myself.
She goes still, eyes narrowing and breath hitching. “Don’t twist this.”
“I’m not. I’m saying it because it mattered to both of us. You wouldn’t have kissed me back if it didn’t.”
Her mouth opens, then closes, words lost to the war happening behind her eyes.
“We can’t,” she manages finally, breathing unsteadily. “You know that. There are rules…”
“I know you have to know about my brother, Cole, and Michele,” I counter.
“Please,” she snaps, voice breaking at the edges. “She was the head coach’s daughter, not a PR intern. And you think that made it easier for her? You think I want to be the next office rumor? The stupid girl who couldn’t keep her distance?”
She’s angry, but underneath it, there’s fear. She’s worked her ass off to get here, and one terrible story could wreck that.
“They made it work, so can we.”
“You really think this is the same?”
“I think people are going to talk no matter what. If it comes down to it, let them talk about me. Not you.”
Her eyes flash with something fierce and pained. “Don’t play the hero, Kyle.”
“I’m not,” I tell her, meaning every word. “If this costs me something, fine, but it shouldn’t cost you.”
She looks at me then, and I can see everything. Every inch of her is trying to stay professional while her heart is tearing through the seams.
I take a careful step closer, like she’s a wild thing I could scare off if I move too fast. “It wasn’t fake for me, Alycia.”
Her breath catches, eyes flicking up to mine, and something in my chest caves in. “Don’t.”
“I meant every second,” I say, steady this time.
“Stop.” Her eyelids flutter shut, her throat working around words she can’t say.
“I can’t.”
I swear I can feel her heartbeat through the space that still separates us. The same pull from last night burns through the walls she’s rebuilding.
“I wanted it to be real. I still do.”
Her eyes open, and they’re wet. Full of desperate fury, and I’ve never seen anything more beautiful in my life. “Then you’d better forget how to want something you can’t have.”
The words slice clean, but her voice cracks halfway through betraying her.
And that’s what breaks me because she doesn’t mean it.
I hear the truth in the fracture of her voice, the way the last syllable trembles like it’s bleeding out between us.
It’s not anger; it’s heartbreak. It’s her trying to convince herself that walking away will hurt less than staying.
But I see the flicker in her eyes when she says forget, the way her fingers tighten around her arms like she needs something solid to hold on to before she falls apart.
She’s trying so hard to make this neat, to fold it into something she can control.
But her voice and eyes give her away. If I reached out and touched her right now, I know she’d crumble.
And maybe that’s why I don’t, because I don’t want her broken; I just want her to be mine.
I swallow the ache that rises in my throat and take a slow step closer, quiet enough that the floor doesn’t even creak. “I can’t just turn it off, and I don’t think you can either.”
Her shoulders shake once, almost imperceptibly, before she forces them still again.
God, she’s beautiful in a way that ruins you, like she’s holding herself together with sheer willpower.
I don't want to be the mistake she tries to erase. All I want is to make this easier for her, to prove that it doesn’t have to cost her everything.
But she can’t hear that when she’s built her entire life on being unshakable.
So, I stand there, helpless, while she rebuilds her walls, brick by brick.
Even as she looks me dead in the eye and says, “I can do anything I put my mind to. And so can you. Forget anything that happened before we met today in my office.” I can still hear the truth echoing underneath it.
For a second, neither of us moves. It’s like the air itself knows that we crossed into something invisible and can’t go back.
Her chest rises and falls, and her eyes shine like she’s fighting a war no one else can see, then she blinks and buries every trace of feeling under that sharp, polished calm she wears like armor.
“You’ll get your schedule in an email, Mr. Hendrix,” she says, and the sound of my last name feels like a door slamming shut between us. “Try not to make my job harder than it already is.”
The words are professional and controlled, exactly what she’s supposed to say.
I want to tell her she doesn’t have to do this.
That she doesn’t have to pretend none of it mattered, but I don’t.
She needs this moment of control more than she needs my comfort.
And if I care about her even a little, I’ll let her have it.
Alycia shifts in her chair, pretending to review the notes in front of her. Her eyes don’t lift, but I can see the pulse fluttering at her throat.
“You don’t have to pretend with me.”
Her breath catches, sharp but silent, and then she exhales through her nose. Her eyes remain fixed on the paper she hasn’t actually read for the last five minutes.
“I’m not pretending.”
She flips to a blank page and says, still not looking at me, “You’ll report to Janine for media training since you missed the rookie training. That’s the protocol.”
There’s a beat where I wait for her to take it back. She doesn’t.
“Janine,” I repeat, quietly. “Not you?”
Her jaw tightens. “It’s better this way.”
Better for who? The words burn the back of my throat, but I swallow them because she looks like she’s holding herself together by threads.
I want to touch her, to tilt her chin until she looks at me again.
But I don’t because she’s trying so hard to stay composed, and I know what it costs her to do it.
So, I just stand there, staring at the back of her head like an idiot, memorizing the way her breathing stutters when the silence stretches too long, before taking a slow step back.
The sound of my shoes against the floor breaks the spell.
Her hand freezes mid-note, but she doesn’t look up as I whisper, “I’ll see you around, Torres.”
She nods once, and I walk to the door before I change my mind.
My reflection ghosts across the glass as I turn back one last time and find her still sitting at her desk, pretending to work and not feeling anything.
But I see the truth in the way her shoulders hunch just slightly when she thinks I’m gone.
The way her hands cover her face for half a heartbeat before she drags them away again, forcing herself upright.
That one motion undoes me because I know she is breaking, too, and I can’t do a damn thing about it.
I press a palm to the glass before I leave, and the imprint fogs with the heat of my skin.
“Yeah,” I whisper, voice low and wrecked. “We’ll just pretend.”
But pretending doesn’t stop the ache that’s already burrowed under my skin. And I know, even as I walk away, I’ll feel her there in every breath I take that doesn’t have her in it.